


Hymn to Breaking Strain

by JeanLuciferGohard



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: F/M, Gen, Married Couple, Mythology - Freeform, Oral Sex, Pinkerton!Furies, Slowly re-learning how to be married, back at it again with emotional horniness, mythological contract law
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 15:15:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19793551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanLuciferGohard/pseuds/JeanLuciferGohard
Summary: It’s a bad business brings her back down, trailing a late Spring frost.Bad business, in a smooth white envelope and a telegram inside that says only:Please comeSTOPImportantSTOPThe thing about people going Down is that they're supposed tostayDown. And the business of the girl, and that poet-boy mighta gone and landed Mr. Hades in a whole mess of trouble. Might could be a man has the Furies on 'im. Might could be he needs his wife's help.





	Hymn to Breaking Strain

**I. Hell for Leather**

It’s a bad business brings her back down, trailing a late Spring frost.

Bad business, in a smooth white envelope and a telegram inside that says only:

> _ Please come  _
> 
> _ STOP _
> 
> _ Important _
> 
> _ STOP _

It bears no seal, and it doesn’t say “I love you”, and sure, it ain’t so long that the sore spots between them aren’t tender still, but it does not, in point of fact, sign off at all, which bodes ill for  _ somebody, _ that’s for damn sure. For a week or two, Persephone waits for an earthquake, as he has been known to move beneath the Earth. It never comes. Neither does another letter.

It’s the anomaly of it that finally has her throwing a sheet over the roses and high-tailing it to the train, and Hermes, already shaking his head at her approach, had said: 

“I dunno, cousin. I do not know. But it can’t be good, I tell you that much.”

“Bad business,” drawls the woman outside her husband’s office, working her chaw from one cheek over to the other. She spits, and her thin, chapped mouth looks almost lipless in the grey light, an ugly, twisted seam in her gaunt, windburnt face. Near as tall as Mr. Hades is, which as anybody’ll tell you, is something of a feat, but dried down like old leather, hair cropped close enough to show the lines of her skull, and a revolver the size of a toddler propped on her hip like it was her own child. Red coat. Red eyes, like a mad dog. “Not as makes no nevermind to me, ma’am, but the whole affair of it is,” and she grins with an ugly, yellow-toothed relish, “nasty. You sure you got a part in it?”

“Alecto” Persephone says, and she nods, perfectly civil, on account of her mama raised her right, and even if Alecto-that-under-the-earth-takes-vengeance-on-men didn’t have one, the bitch should’ve learned some manners by now. Sure, and being made of seafoam and your daddy’s red blood ain’t no excuse to act like you were raised in a barn, and Our Lady of the speakeasy and the summer rain oughta know. “Your sisters, they well?”

“Oh, she’ll be by.” 

Alecto, who undertakes to scourge whosoever swears falsely, works her chaw between her brassy teeth, flicking dust from the high, vulture-feathered collar of her coat.

“Kin-slayer,” she purrs, “Ugly scene. As I say, ma’am, it is a bad business.”

“No stranger to those,” and Lord, it has never felt quite right to draw on the current under Hadestown, the rushing hydro-electric of the soul to its rest. Not-rest. Feels like a missed stair, but if it’s His, then it’s Hers, too, even if she can’t hardly stomach it, and there ain’t no way, she knows, down in the pit of her, that he called her down over a goddamn Pinkerton-man loosed from the chain, and no way in Hell that one of the Erinyes can level a threat to  _ her _ . She has every right to be here. Every right, and fifty percent of the shares. So the black bleeds up her dress, and Persephone purses her lips and says, “Married one, didn’t I?”.

On the bright side, even if it does feel like finding out too late that the coffee’s gone cold, oily down the back of her throat, the asphalt-oyster-shimmer light isn’t so hard to see through anymore. She can see the other two loping up to their sister long before Alecto does.

Red eyes, like mad dogs. Red coats, which maybe Tisiphone-who-runs-the-hunter-to-ground wears cut higher over her hips to flash the snakey, brass-studded whip coiled around her waist. Maybe her hair is longer, a drowned tangle over her vulture-feathered collar. Maybe Megaera-named-the-jealous-one is broader through the chest, rounder in the face, maybe there’s a veil hanging from her hat. Maybe they all look exactly the same, hounds kept hungry and brushed twice a day.

Maybe it doesn’t matter, because they come loping up, and before you can say “I call upon Lord Hades, who presides below”, before you can say “jack be nimble”, the door opens, and there he is, smoothing down his immaculate waistcoat and ushering the whole mess of them inside.

“I appreciate your understanding,” he rumbles, looking at  _ them _ , talking to  _ her _ .

The man never did know how to apologize.

He almost fits his hand to the small of her back as they go in. She almost jerks away. Instead, she studies his face, which it seems an awful cliche to go calling “stern and patrician”, but hell if it ain’t just that. Her husband’s business face, that he spent such an awful long time perfecting, smooth and remote as he takes her hand. She lets him.

_ Why did you call _ . She doesn’t say it.

He doesn’t say anything either, for his part, but she knows exactly what it sounds like anyway.

_ Please. Please wait. _

Mr. Hades, he is a persuasive man. Sure, and it’s a little bit the voice, but mostly it’s the Look. Like out of the innumerable, impossibly important tasks on such a busy man’s plate, you’re the only one of them that matters right now. Even better, like the calls and the clients  _ do _ matter more,  _ should _ matter more, and he’s sticking his neck out anyway, ignoring them just for you. Bedroom eyes and a boardroom jawline. A man of few words, Mr. Hades, but Lord can he look at you.

So she sighs, and settles in to watch him work.

“We’ll be needin’ his papers, ‘course,” drawls Alecto (unless it’s Tisiphone), scratching at her throat with one long, ragged fingernail. She settles a pair of pince-nez onto her beak expectantly.

They’re under  _ A,  _ for Atreus, a folder almost as thick as her wrist that even then seems dwarfed in his massive hand, and Lord  _ almighty _ , she never could stand for this kind of posturing. The Erinyes lean redly into his space, because he kept them waiting. He kept them waiting because it wouldn’t do to seem too accommodating. The spectacles mean something, and the particular shade of his suit means something, and  _ Lord. _ Say what you damn well mean. A body oughta just lay their cards on the table, sure enough. But Hades, he keeps his close to his chest, barred up behind the pinstripes of his suit, which, she can see now, with the current running through her, isn't  _ quite _ black, an oilslick shimmer hiding in the weave. He says nothing, just nods, and stoops down like the end of days over his big black filing cabinet, offers the folder to Tisiphone (unless it’s Megaera), who glances sidelong at Persephone’s pinched expression and shrugs.

“Not as I know the whole of the particulars, but turns out the boy’s momma was steppin’ out on his daddy with some fella, and the fella hauled off and shot him over some business with boy’s sister. So the boy comes home, up and kills the pair of ‘em. As I say, it is a bad business, but.”

Megaera (unless it’s Alecto) jerks her collar straight, concluding:

“Not as makes no nevermind to me, job bein’ what it is.”

She reaches for the folder. Hades twitches it back out of reach.

“You’ll find it’s all in order. The boy is remanded to your custody, pending his trial.”

Alecto bares her teeth.

“Trial?”

Mr. Hades, he turns the paper a little. There’s a silver owl stamped on it, flashing against the neon outside. Less of it, now. Seems like less. A little easier on the eyes, but not so much she can tell, one way or the other, if it’s on purpose. But it is easier on the eyes, and more fool her to admit, in even in the inside of her own head, and it ain’t the only thing easy on the eyes here. Not much to do but watch, and wait for her damn husband to tell her what the hell was so goddamn important, and he’s a son of a bitch, sure enough, but  _ lord _ . She hates it, but the business face looks good, fits well. The winter-white hair sweeping back off his face is immaculate, his hands are pale and strong. Son of a bitch.

Alecto-Tisiphone-Megaera draws herself up with a snarl, snatching the folder, and whirling on her heel. Their heel. Whichever. Don’t make no nevermind to Persephone.

“Well, you’re a busy man, I won’t keep you. But, by the by,” says Alecto

“I heard the strangest story on my way down here; there’s a boy topside who is running his mouth something fierce about this place, which is mighty curious, on account of he ain’t dead,” says Tisiphone

“Be an awful shame if you’d forsworn your makin’, begging your pardon, Mr. Hades. Don’t fancy having to run you down over it.” says Megaera, who is lying through her filed, yellow teeth.

Persephone thinks to herself:

_ Well, shit. _

But what comes out of her mouth is:

“I hate to be a disappointment to you, ladies, but I do have every right to talk about my own house when I’m not in it. Boy’s just excitable. Musicians, they’re all that way.”

Alecto-Tisiphone-Megaera grins.

The door closes behind.

Perspehone, of the green and the growing, swears a blue streak to wake the dead, moving to crowd her husband against the edge of his desk.

“You  _ never _ said–”

Ain’t even satisfying. He just lets it happen, stony faced and going down like a landslide.

She breaks away with a disgusted noise, striking out for the sidebar, and Persephone stands there and glares with all the meanness she can muster, before turning to rifle through his liquor cabinet. Just wants a little of the good stuff to ease the way, a little coffin varnish.

“Did you know?”

He does keep a stock of the good stuff, always did, always will, and hell if she’s ever been able to suss out if he drinks whiskey because he’s the kind of man who drinks whiskey, or if it’s all a show because he  _ seems _ like the kind of man who’d drink whiskey, or if it’s that whiskey, the smoky, peaty kind he keeps around, tastes like it does on account of a whole mess of decay, and that somehow makes it his business, or if it’s only there for her to steal. So she helps herself to a few fingers, and maybe the fingers are more like what you’d find on his hands, not hers, gold and clear like the best of August. Persephone stoppers the decanter with a  _ clink. _

“Did you know,” she repeats, knocking back her drink, “that this would happen?”

Hades says nothing.

“Okay,” she huffs. Sets down her glass on the edge of his desk. “Okay, well, I tell you what. You asked me to come, and you said it was important, and I came. I’m trying. But I am not gonna stand here, trying to dig out whatever it is you need to say to me, so you can spit it the hell out, or you can go it alone.” she snaps.

“I ...suspected,” he says at length, dragged up from some interminable depth. He curls his hand around her empty glass, thumbing over the rim, and that means something, too, no doubt.  _ Lord _ , if the man would fucking  _ say _ anything without having to claw it up from the clay. “I didn’t know.”

The bricks on his wrist shift like a house coming down, vanishing up into his cuffs.

A body oughta say what they damn well mean. Lay it all on the table.

What Hades does, however, is he slides around to the other side of the desk, snakey and fast in a way that belies his build and has never stopped being something of a shock. He lets go of her glass slowly, like it pains him, like it means something, and produces from somewhere about his person a key, the white-gold of old bones. He unlocks the bottommost drawer on the left, which, despite all the time she used to pass under that goddamn mountain range of a desk, she never could get into. Something about the particularities of the bottommost left drawer never were quite right. Don’t seem like it should fit the space it does. 

What he does is, he opens the drawer, and pulls out a thick ream of paper, flaky and near-fossilized with age, wrapped in hide so old it might as well be a fossil too. He offers it up.

“What is this,” Persephone sighs

“Everything. Contracts, charters, judgements. This place. I need–” He stops. Misfires. Starts again, and the engine won’t turn over, “Will you–”

He says it like it costs him something, the asking. Like it costs him something, noted down in the back of his ledger with the neatness and finality of a punched ticket, like he knows, sure enough, exactly what it’s gonna cost him to say so, and can’t quite convince himself to pay up.

“Could you look?”

The  _ please _ doesn’t quite make it out of his mouth.

Persephone, the Ways and the Means, Lady of What you Want and What you Need and what You Signed to Get it, startles, folding the papers slowly,  _ slowly _ against her chest.

“I can try.”

It’s late. Not late so you’d notice, leastways not with the blinding, tundra-carnival outside, seventeen shades of concrete and neon (but less, a little less than there used to be), glaring outside, and a late frost can’t last. Gotta break come morning. But it is late, and a body needs rest. A body can’t sleep on that damn train, shakes too much.

(Leastways, a body can’t sleep on that damn train without another body there to soften the blow)

The thing is, and it smarts like hell, the thing is, and he says it like it pains him to admit even more than it pained him to ask for help, that Mr. Hades, he did not rightly believe that his wife would come. Had sent a telegram winging off like a prayer, and never once turned a thought to it being  _ answered _ . So her room ain’t made up. So, being a gentleman, for all that he’s a son of a bitch, Hades offers up his room like the whole thing could be burnt on a goddamn altar, and says he’ll sleep in his office. Don’t sleep much anyhow.

“Bullshit.” says Persephone, and sure, it has been a dog’s age since they’ve shared a bed, but sure, and they’ve been married for a dog’s age longer than that. Always did end up in that big ol’ bed with that man at least one night out of hundred-odd, even when she hated him. Anyhow, they’re trying. Anyhow, there’s things that are easier in the dark.

It ain’t that in the dark, they could be anybody. It ain’t that. She’d know him in any kind of dark, be it train tunnel or grave, the heavy insomniac bulk of him twisting beside her. It’s that in the dark, he can only be himself. Lord, and ain’t it a Luxury, the real luxury, which never was the ten-million thread-count sheets or the mattress softer than summer rain, to have all that warmth beside you. Runs hot, does Hades. Ain’t it a luxury to stretch out and not feel any edges, ten miles of husband left on either side. 

Would be, anyway, if he’d keep still.

“You keep wakin’ me up, old man, I’m gonna knock your head clean off.”

Ain’t it easier to let her voice run syrupy and soft, and scrape her teeth gently against the ridge of his spine when it’s too dark to see the way the muscle lays on the bone. Ain’t it easier to nuzzle into the small of his back if she can’t see herself doing it. Ain’t it easier to forgive him for not apologizing out loud, when she can feel his hand reach down to close over hers.

Too dark to see it properly, but she’d know the shape of him in any kind of dark, and it’s...different. Than it used to be. Soot, most like, some industry grime on him, stained onto the skin and she’d chew him one good and proper for not even bothering to sluice it off before coming to bed if weren’t so much easier to be like this in the dark, and she’s leaving in the morning; why ruin it now?

Easier to let it lie. 

It ain’t until it’s light again, the steel-shimmer foundry-glow non-sunrise of a morning in the Underground, when she wakes, no luxuriously warm body beside her, that Persephone sees it straight.

What happens is, Persephone looks, and her husband is not there. He has left her a cup of coffee on the bedside table, same as she always took it. She tries, and fails, not to soften at the knowledge that he remembers. Persephone sips her coffee, and closes up her suitcase, and finds her husband in the ensuite, with his neck lathered up and a razor in hand, and his shirt open around him like a shroud.

Bricked up.

His back, through the shirt, is rows and rows and rows of the same bricks marching up his arm, from the shoulders on down. His ribs are a wall. The left side of his chest.

And she has no notion when it got so far. When he walled up the man she married.

His coffee rattles on the back of the sink.

“Knocking hell for leather, aintcha, leaving so soon,” he rumbles groggily. Like he’s clean forgot that a man of his standing don’t talk like that anymore. Like they’re just rounding the crest of being grown, back at the beginning of the world.

“It’s May,” she hears herself say, and all she sees is bricks, the whole way home, running hell for leather back Up Top, like she could get away from knowing how much things’ve changed.

* * *

**II. Three Card Monte**

Mr. Hades, he is not a gambling man. Not inclined to the taking of chances, Mr. Hades. He is, however, very well-acquainted with one game in particular, which he has been playing since he buried his bachelorhood in the dirt. Find the Lady. Six months out of every twelve, oh where oh where did she go. Goes like this:

Take a deck of cards, any old cards, any old people in the wide world, shuffle and cut em up as you please. Throw most of em out. King of Spades, you don’t need him, forget about him, he’s in his place.

Ready?

There’s three cards: Jack of Diamonds, Queen of Hearts, Three of Knives. Only three cards, couldn’t be simpler, all you gotta do is watch the Queen. Keep watching.

Okay, find the Lady.

In June, she’s holed up on the back patio with a pisco sour and papers spread all around her like a holocaust of crysanthemums. She’s half-sunk into a an old wool cardigan; always takes a minute or two hundred to shake the chill after going down Below. Persephone sifts through the papers in the perfect summer glow, chewing her knuckle.

“What’d that man of yours want that was worth the risk to my heirlooms?” says Our Lady’s sainted mother, cupping a tomato striped like a tiger and taut almost to bursting. It hangs like a man’s heart, heavy and purple-red on the vine. 

“Nothing, Ma.” 

Demeter purses her lips and nods pointedly at the mess.

“Whole lotta nothing, looks like.”

“It’s  _ nothing _ , Ma.”

That’s her husband’s voice, the bang of a coffin-lid, punched-ticket, we-ain’t-having-this-discussion voice. If she learned anything at all from Himself downstairs, Persephone learned that. Works a sight better than arguing with Ma in her own, on account of her Mama’s had all of forever to marshall her forces against her daughter’s mulish bite, and almost no experience whatsoever arguing with Hades. Her Mama don’t know where to lay down the dynamite to blast through that rock.

Demeter raises her hands up, all _not that it’s_ ** _my_** _business, but_ , and turns away.

There’s bitters and lemon juice bleeding onto the corner of a page. Persephone gathers her hair over one shoulder, and chews her knuckles, and thinks:

_ What the hell am I supposed to do with all of this _ .

She picks up the papers, and puts them down, and picks them up again, and rocks her bare feet against the splintering stoop, and thinks:

_ I have got to get out this damn house. _

Mostly, she thinks of bricks. Her husband’s back and arm and chest, all walled up against something, and Lord, ain’t it been an age since she thought of him at all while sitting Topside. The feeling sours on her mouth even more than her drink, and Persephone stands, abruptly, knocking over the glass. She thinks of going down to Hermes’ bar. Thinks maybe she could take a bath, thinks maybe she should send a letter down, and all the while, the glass rolls on its side, spilling pisco sour onto the doom of Tantalus and scattering a reflected explosion of perfect summer light.

Persephone, she does end up at the bar, though. Old Habits.

“Cousin, you look like shit,” Hermes announces, leaning over to greet her with his knuckles planted on the bar. Still hasn’t gotten tired of the old man act, seamed face crinkling with delight that almost seems more sincere than the real thing, and Hermes, he shakes his head and continues “What can I do ya for?”

Doesn’t offer anything on the house, though. Never does. Don’t forget to tip the help, folks.

And it takes a minute, turning it over in her head, to decide what it is she wants. Not a drink, but:

“Is he here?”

“Who, the boy? Nah, cousin. Skipped town. Imagine it musta ridden him raw to stay, considering. Poor kid.”

His face falls, just for an instant, before bouncing back up. Hermes gestures expansively, rounding the bar to take her arm.

“I got a new one, though, really something. C’mon, cuz, lemme introduce you,”

Hermes babbles like a brook, a picture-perfect mountain stream, silver and clear, but also like that stream runs into a still, and don’t that White Lightning pick a man up. Don’t it go for a whole two hundred and fifty dollars a barrel, on a good day? Ain’t it fine to live it up in the summer?

But that’s the Jack of Diamonds, and it’s harder than it looks, isn’t it? Try again. 

Round and round they go, and are you watching? You got it?

Okay, find the Lady.

In July, having sent down three letters as regards The Business, and having received a reply and a half back, she’s padding down the stairs while the morning comes up over the windowpane, and it comes up red. Red sun. Red coats, hanging three to a hook on her Mama’s old coat rack. Red eyes, like mad dogs, staring her down over the coffee pot, and Alecto, who-flays-the-sin-from-the-flesh, purrs “Mornin’, ma’am. Lovely home you have.” at the same time as her Ma gives her a hard look from behind the counter, and Persephone presses her lips into a hard, thin line.

Their waistcoats are the color of kerosene.

“Ladies,” she says, flatly. “What brings you by.”

“Oh, nothin’ much, ma’am. Just passing through in the course of the job, you understand,” says Tisiphone, who-wears-at-her-throat-the-murderer’s-bones. Her necklace clacks as she slurps her coffee.

“But if there’s anything as weighs on your mind, ma’am,” says Megaera, huntress-of-the-unfaithful, hat tucked under her arm, “we’d be happy to take a look into it. Did hear a nasty rumour as regards, ah, Himself.”

Persephone, she does not deign dignify such with a response, pours herself a cup in silence, but her Mama, who loves her daughter so dearly, and who never afforded her baby girl’s husband the dignity that the good Lord of the Up-Above gave a fence post, says:

“What did that Man do.”

“ _ Nothing _ , Ma.”

But Megarea, and she’s almost sure it  _ is _ Megaera,  _ plinks _ her nails against the side of her mug,  _ one-two-three-four-five _ and shugs. 

“All due respect, Ma’am, but I’ve heard tell otherwise. Something of a specialty of mine,” she says, and Megaera wears wedding rings on every goddamn one of her fingers, heavy enough to break bone, and she draws the last word out loooooong,  _ one-two-three-four-five  _ beats. Licks her chops.

“As I have heard, Ma’am, there was business between your late husband and a girl taken, y’might say, before her time. Not like the man, as I have heard, to being takin’ such an interest.”

_One-two-three._ _In-ter-est,_ raspy and percussive as Megaera, but possibly Tisiphone, leans back, thumb hooked over her whip. Their revolver.

An argument is a number racket, really, it’s all how many hits you can get in before the other guy gets in his, so Persephone sets down her mug with  _ one-two _ decisive clicks, and she fires off a black look at her Mama, just for good measure, and levels an even bleaker one at the callers of the curse.

“Well,” she drawls “I appreciate your concern, but the matter’s been settled.”

“Sure it has,” says Tisiphone, but maybe Alecto, nodding agreeably.

“Sure, and you never met a man who deserved it,” mutters Megaera, knuckles curling restlessly in their rings.

“Sure and I have,” says Persephone, and Lord, but she cannot  _ stand _ the goddamn posturing, but Persephone, she knows how to run a numbers racket, sure enough, stirring the ole one-two lumps into her coffee and pursing her lips. A little too weak, truth be told. Mama never did make it strong enough to suit her. “But he ain’t one of ‘em. And if he were, I’d do it myself.”

“Now, ma’am,” Alecto preens, flashing the eye and the serpent pinned to her breast, “ain’t nothing good comes of a body taking the law upon themself. Best leave it to those as charged with it. Our regards to your late husband.”

Now that one, that was pretty obviously dead wrong, but the Three of Knives, it will sneak up on a body. Get a man in the back. Old suit, the Knives. Older than Spades by a dog’s age or so, but forget about the Spades, the Spades are where they need to be, there’s only three cards here, Jack of Diamonds, Three of Knives, Queen of Hearts, and you get one more try for free. One more on the house. Three cards, okay? You ready? You watching?

Find the Lady.

In August, she’s curled up in a bathtub that’s too small to be any kind of comfortable, hand between her legs, lips between her teeth, thinking of bricks. The water breaks over her stomach as Persephone eases herself up in the aftermath, dropping her forehead down to her drawn-up knees, which are gonna keep feeling like a poplar in a high wind for a good ‘nother minute or twelve.

“ _ Shit, _ ” she breathes, “Son of a bitch.”

The thing is, is that she was out helping Ma, and it’s honest work, but  _ Lord _ , is it hot out.  _ God,  _ but it’s filthy, dirt under her nails and sweat plastering her old calico to her back in the worst way. So she went up and started running the tub just soon as Ma even looked like she might be of a mind to leave the bougainvillea to its own devices, and Persephone, she ain’t fit that tub in years. Not since the goddamn Cretaceous has she fit that tub. So she got to thinking about her tub Downstairs, the big one, which she loved even when they were clawing at each other like cats in a sack, and then that got her to thinkin’ about her husband, and one thing does lead to another.

Even if one thing ain’t led to another in an age on an age. 

It’s just–it’s the business, and the bricks, and she’s a woman grown, a woman _ married _ , who ain’t got no business anymore acting like a teenager with a crush, but hell if things aren’t  _ just _ different enough these days that she can’t work out how to  _ act _ . Her hips pop as she stands.

At the very least, her rooms are a ways off. Took an age, but Ma had finally conceded that much. There’s a space carved out which is almost hers and hers alone.

But  _ Lord _ is it hot, air hanging heavy and damp even long after dark, like–

And there she goes again,  _ goddammit _ . Friskier than a jackrabbit and nothing to show for it, huffing a disgusted noise at her own fool imagination as she hitches her towel back up over her chest and pads back to her rooms. Used to be her Mama’s cellar, way back when, and maybe as a newlywed that meant something, to be closer to the ground, and maybe after that it was just. Well, that was the space they had. Still smells like strawberry jam, sometimes. Pickled watermelon rinds.

It’s cooler down there, but not by much. Every breath in takes  _ effort _ , huffed through the wet rag of late August, and it feels so much like a slap in the face with a wet towel that she cannot bear to keep hers on for one more second. Persephone untucks it, and it’s just enough of a relief that it might just be the best thing she’s ever felt. Can’t bear to get dressed again just yet. Just sits on the bed, towel loose around her hips and her head tipped back against the wall, rubbing tiredly at her hairline with the back of one hand. Sifting through a stack of papers, leafy and near-fossilized with age, that have long since ceased to hold any meaning at all, she’s read ‘em so many goddamn times now. And after a long, long moment, she picks up her towel, and unfurls it onto the floor, settling cross-legged with her palms pressed flat to the ground. She knocks.

No answer.

“Well. I’ve looked, and let me tell you, I am not makin’ any kind of progress. They can’t kill you, that’s for damn sure, but. I dunno. Strip you of the rights, most like. Hard to tell.”

No answer.

“You know, this ain’t the way to treat somebody whose help you  _ asked _ for.”

Persephone chews at her knuckles. Swipes at a drip of water sliding over her breast. And, after a long, long moment, lowers herself all the way down, lying on her side, cheek pressed to the floor.

“What the hell are you doin’ down there?”

_ Lover, you know what I do down here. Last I recall, you didn’t want any part in it. Made that abundantly clear. _

And she starts, scrabbling up on elbows and knees, bunching the towel up something awful before smoothing herself back down. He can’t see up. He don’t know. She can see down, sometimes, down through the roots and vines and cave moss, but it does give a body a  _ powerful _ vertigo.

So it’s a good thing as Persephone is lyin’ down already.

“So we’re speaking again? Just about this business?”

He’s in his office, pale face gone all ashy with the lack of sleep. He looks awful. Hair falling down limply over his forehead, growing out too long at the sides. All bricked up, creeping up the back of his collar, and his immaculate vest an ugly topographic wrinkle, with the buttons all askew. Dogs asleep at his feet. 

_ Was there something else? _

He’s nursing a drink, and he looks horribly, almost exactly like the man she married. Son of a bitch.

And ain’t that the problem, that they’ve been married so damn long that it’s practically blood from a stone trying to remember what anything was like before. Ain’t that the meat of it, that even while she’s trying to think of something to _say_ , Persephone knows almost exactly what he’d say back if he had half a mind to be cruel, exactly what’d come out as a kindness. _Do you miss me? Of course. Always._ Or else that long stony, silence her husband adopts when he wants to lie and say _no_ , but can’t. Or else _you know I do,_ with that acid bitterness. He’ll twist the knife, Mr. Hades. When he wants to.

She sighs, after a spell, rolling over suddenly onto her back. Crosses her arms. And Persephone, who too is the Queen of the down Yonder, eyes closed against the dizziness of her doubled-vision, lets her head roll back to one side and presses her cheek back to the floor and huffs:

“Oh,  _ hell _ . I dunno. Why aren’t you sleepin’?”

_ Because I have work to do. _

She snorts. “Sure, all the work you make for yourself.”

Down yonder, Hades scrubs his hand over his jaw, and rakes his hair back from his forehead. He tips his head back and back, staring blindly at the ceiling.

_Well_. he drawls. _Don’t help that_ ** _somebody_** _has been teaching my dogs bad habits. Spend all night chasing them out of my goddamn bed._

“I imagine that’s your fault, lover. Never would’ve met ‘em in the first place if you hadn’t brought me down.” It’s a weak joke, sure, but ain’t they trying? Persephone holds her hand out at arm’s length, inspecting her wedding ring. “Lord,” she announces, “but were you ever stupid when you married me.”

**_I_** _was stupid?_ _I seem to recall you didn’t think to bring a suitcase that first time. Couldn’t think what to pack, you said. Spent the whole time in the same damn dress._

(Our Lady of the Field and the Flowers did not, in fact, spend the entirety of her honeymoon in the same goddamn dress, being as the dress in question spent a sizable portion of said honeymoon on the floor, and the remainder thrown over the back of a chair.)

“Well, I wasn’t exactly old enough to know better yet, was I? Young and stupid. Now you, old man, you were just stupid.”

There’s a tremor, just enough to shake the dust off the rafters, just enough to know that he laughed.

“Anyway,” she continues, “didn’t you promise I’d never want for anything, husband?”

And it’s wrong, she knows it’s wrong the second it comes out, and  _ goddamn, _ but she could just kick herself for it. Down below, he’s sitting up, and there’s just a second, just a flinch–

You’d barely even see it, if you didn’t know. Hell, it’d be easier if she  _ didn’t _ see it, just heard that snakey meanness hissing at her, and Mr. Hades, he never did know what to do with his hurt except to make it somebody else’s problem, on account of asking for help is just about the worst thing a body could ever do. A man needs help, he may as well just lay himself in the cold ground then and there, cause there’s no coming back from it. A man needs something, he might never stop, and ain’t that just the worst thing you could think of? Better to beg forgiveness. Better to pay whatever it costs and never need anything, better to hurt first and foremost and drag ‘em all down with you, and Lord, don’t misery love company? Don’t it hurt you to hurt them, and ain’t Hades lucky that he never cared, not even a little, about hurting his own self? This is the thing about Mr. Hades that his wife has never quite cottoned to, being the kind to hurt carelessly, thoughtlessly, whenever the fancy strikes her, and never think too deeply on it. Move on.

But seeing it. Seeing it’s a different thing altogether.

It looks like a flinch, and then a gut-punch, it looks like the King in the Mine slowly, slowly shrinking in on himself and on the one hand, there oughta be a comedy in it, a man her husband’s size trying to curl up like he ain’t geologically massive in his own right, but mostly it just hurts to watch. And don’t it taste like blood on the teeth, like rust, that she knows he’s only curling up so small on account of as far as he knows, there ain’t nobody to see it. Hunched over his whiskey, a hurt dog gone to ground.

_ So I did. Never was enough, though, was it? _

Voice gone all snakey and mean, but his face shuttered up like a broken window. His dogs whine at his feet.

“No such thing as ‘enough’,” she whispers, and Lord, if he could hear it right, for  _ once _ , that there’s no  _ enough _ because it ain’t a thing a body’s gotta slave so hard to try and  _ pay _ for, it ain’t  _ like _ that.

But instead he just knocks back his drink.

_ Don’t I know it. _

“You know that ain’t what I mean.”

Shit.

She stays, though, stays curled up on her towel with her palm pressed flat to the floor, only sits up to drag the sheet over herself before she’s right back down.

The thing is, is that she’s too proud, and he’s too stubborn, and even so, even then, it’s easier to fall asleep with him there. Ain’t that what love is?

And Persephone thinks, maybe, just before her wakefulness finally gives up the ghost, that the ground moves, and her husband says

_ I know _ .

But who the hell knows.

That’s the trouble with the game, sure enough. Body wins their stake back, and then it’s time to go again, and it just goes round and round and round. Keep digging that hole.

Fancy doubling your money? C’mon now, easy as anything, and you’ve already won the once, aintcha? Could walk away a whole four times richer now.

Ready? Got it?

Find the Lady.

* * *

**III. Jeremiah 8:20**

Oh, September. See now, the harvest is past, the summer is over, and we are not saved, we’re just watching a train coming up from way down below. Like a pale horse, steaming in the air.

“Cousin!” cries Hermes, arms thrown wide with a warm welcome even realer than the genuine article, as it pulls into the station. “Your wife teach you to play nice, yet?”

Hades fixes him with a stony, gimlet-eyed glare.

Hermes shrugs it off, all lime and gin fizz, and laughs “Cousin, how long have I been driving dead men to your door? You know that don’t work on me.”

“I can’t teach that man a damn thing,” says Persephone, taking her husband’s hand, “Believe me, I’ve tried.”

And that ain’t  _ strictly _ true, but it don’t matter yet. It’ll come up later.

It is a beautiful autumn, every kind of purple and orange, like her Mama’s heirlooms. Trees striped like tigers, leaves falling heavy like a man’s heart. The sky is as blue as it ever is, ever has been or will be, clear and cold. If only she could ever tell if he does it on purpose, or if maybe, contrarily, it’s a thing that  _ she _ does. Never thought about it that way, truth be told.

The road to Hell is rusty and lovely, and for the first time in a dog’s age, she spends it temple-to-temple with her Husband, heads bent low over the Business. And every so often, their fingers brush when she stabs at a sub-clause with her stubby red pencil, or he sketches out the shape of an article with his heavy, white hand, and some of the time, they don’t even pull away. The trouble with it is, is that unlike the train, the Business does not proceed in any clear direction.

Crime: That Lord Hades, of the Key and the Keeping, did break that foremost law that the dead are not to leave. That death is death, forever and ever.

Counterpoint: The girl never  _ technically _ left, and he never  _ technically _ let her go, only specified the conditions under which she  _ might _ , possibly, maybe, be allowed to leave.

But then there’s the boy, who  _ also _ came down, and  _ did _ go back, and didn’t he sign something down there? Shoulda kept him, too. And the specification of terms, is that not a precedent? Is that not grounds to argue that any death as causes enough grief should be second-guessed? Is it not godamn  _ fucking _ impossible to get a man off on a technicality these days? Can’t make heads or tails of it. Which is the other problem, is that even if she could, a Pinkerton don’t sleep, and the Erinyes sleep even less, and you cannot nickel-and-dime a dog out for blood.

So they go back and forth on it for a spell. And another. And another.

“Okay,” Persephone sighs, rolling her neck as the train pulls in, “now tell me what it is you’re hidin’ in here. Because I’m not gonna guess.”

Hades looks at her. Looks away.

“Upstairs,” he murmurs, a low distant thunder, and then, worryingly, he adds, “It’s. Complicated.”

Upstairs. Mr. Hades, who looks much better now, fresh-shaved and fresh-shorn, skins out of his suit jacket, which is a charcoal-blue the colour of third shift in December. He folds it. Hades unbuttons his waistcoat, the back of which is red like a dying sun. Lays it aside. Stalls, like an old engine, before rolling up his sleeve to the elbow and presenting his bricked-up arm for inspection. For a long moment, he says nothing, but then, he lays his smallest finger on a brick just under the crease of his wrist and rumbles:

“This is a man named Thomas Mausko. Died of a fever, left behind a sister,” and he touches a brick tucked up near the pulse at his elbow, another around the inside curve of his forearm, “and her son. She died old, the son got shot over some foolishness.”

He rolls his sleeve up further, almost to his bicep. The Bricks are named Nireus, they are named Dido and Martha and Leonteus, son of Coronus. Hecuba. Hector. Anchises. Acamas. Floyd Wainwright. Liza Knowles. 

At some point, Persephone takes his arm in both hands, lips pressed together.

“It’s all here,” he says, low and careful. “This place. These people.”

“How far does it go?” she whispers. Sure, and she has some idea, but this. This…

Hades sketches a vague circle over the left side of his chest, over his shoulder.

Hades is a man, watching his wife run her fingers up his arm and holding very still while she moves around to his back, and Hades is a place, coal-fired and electric-wired and running all day, every day, and Hades is staring at a spot on the wall and snapping, without any real bite, just to say something, ease the tension, “Couldn’t tell you how far it goes in the back. Can’t exactly see.”

Ain’t they trying. Don’t she laugh, just a little?

“Go on, then,” she cajoles, shoving at his shoulder until her husband lays his shirt aside, too. And it does go all the way back, his whole back, shoulder to shoulder and all the way down.

Experimentally, she taps a spot left of his spine.

“Idomeneus.” he says.

“When….” She trails off, frowning. “It wasn’t always like this.”

“Well,” Hades swallows, “we ain’t none of us what we used to be, are we?”

The thing is, is that people change. The world changes, and the things that a body requires of their death changes. Two coins for a ferry ride, four for a train ticket. Inflation, you know, it’ll getcha every time.

“Lord,” Persephone breathes, and then, “We let this go on so long, didn’t we?”

She wraps her arms around his waist, cheek pressed to his back, and her hands don’t quite meet in the middle, but Hades takes one of them anyway.

“We did.”

Now. Now Persephone, when she says she ain’t never been able to teach her husband damn thing, is not,  _ strictly _ speaking, being honest about it. She taught him for one, that a man can no sooner move a river from its course than deny her a single goddamn thing, if she’s of a mind of demand it. So when she slides her fingertips just,  _ juuuuust _ under his belt, somewhere behind behind his hip and just south of decent, Hades just swallows thickly and groans, helplessly, “Tom Manning. Are you sure about this?”

And Persephone, she don’t answer, just slides her hand back up his spine, his bricked-up neck, until her fingernails scrape through the close-cropped scruff of his fade, and Hades, he damn near purrs when she does it, down in the cavernous back of his throat, bowing his head low to let her at it.

“Oh, sit down,” she huffs into his shoulder, “Before I hurt my neck looking up.”

So of course he does. Taught him, a long time ago, that a man’s life will go decidedly easier for him if he’ll do as he’s told.

Lord, and ain’t the Lord of the Down Below warm. Don’t he just look at you like you’re the only thing in the entire world that means anything at all, ain’t it a luxury to have so  _ much _ , a burn in her thighs like an honest day’s work when she has to stretch to fit her knees on either side of his hips. Don’t he just go down like good whiskey when you shove him just so, both hands planted on the titanic breadth of his chest, ain’t it a luxury that his hands can span her waist almost entirely, a grounding, heavy warmth. He slides one of them down to cup the swell of her ass, pressing her down to him, and Persephone, despite herself, feels her eyes flutter shut on a soft, pleased hum.

“Son of a bitch,” she sighs, “I missed you.”

Cards on the table. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Persephone, she taught her husband how to handle her things with a little care, hang her dress up so it don’t wrinkle, and how, too, to tell when she don’t give a good goddamn about it, when to just hike her skirt up out of the way and tug her up to his mouth, and–

Taught him how to do  _ that _ .

He mouths softly at the inside of her thigh, then sucks, right where her leg joins her body, just enough of a sting to call up a bruise. Taught him to go slow, go easy at first, just long careful strokes up and down the length of her while she swears and pulls at his hair. She didn’t teach him how to tease, but he does anyway, pulling back to mouth at her hip with careful, doting reverence before diving back in. Taught him how to hold still while she grinds her hips down against his mouth, even as it’s ruining his carefully styled pompadour.

The trouble is that her knees ain’t what they used to be, and sometime in between the hickeys and her husband’s beginning to speed up and get to the good part, licking into her with a single-minded drive, Persephone’s legs start to go.

“Lover, I can’t–my–will you knock it off!?” she pants, wrenching his head back. “I’m old. And my knees hurt.”

He stares for a moment, almost dumbfounded. Hair in disarray. Mouth all shiny and slick with her, still, looking almost heartbroken. Then he laughs, way down low, and flips them over. Even tugs a pillow down for her hips before flinging her legs back over his shoulders, on account of he is a gentleman, even when he’s a son of a bitch who’s chuckling “ _ You’re _ old? Think of my back, Lover,” before sucking her clit between his lips until she comes with a high whine.

Ain’t those sheets soft. Don’t his whiskers tickle, don’t Persephone reach down to smooth his hair back with her hands still a little shaky, whispering “that’s enough now, that was perfect, you don’t gotta–”

Ain’t it some kinda luxury that he pushes himself up, kisses the corner of her mouth, and whispers “no such thing as ‘enough’,” and starts the whole thing over again, two-three-as many times as she can stand, with that helpless, low noise in his chest anytime she gasps out any kind word? Any gasp at all, truth be told. A man does like to know he’s done well.

Might be all he needs.

It’s later, when Persephone is tucked up against his side, having arrived at the conclusion that she just might be able to move her legs again some time in the next six months, that it occurs to her.

“What happens to this place if they take you?”

Hades grunts. “I don’t know. Suppose it’d pass to you. Half yours, anyway, as it stands now.”

She strokes over his arm. Sucks her teeth.

“Lover,” Persephone announces, “I think I might have an idea.”

* * *

**IV. Anaconda Road**

Hell hath no fury, in point of fact, on account of the Furies themselves hang their hats below Hell, in the black depths even lower down than the Underground. Hell hath no mornings, either, just a foundry glow and a whistle to turn third shift over to first, so it ain’t quite right to say that the Erinyes, the Furies, to whom are accorded a man’s misfortunes, come up like a red morning.

But they do.

Alecto comes up, and Tisiphone comes up, and Megaera comes up, howling over the hills in their red coats, and their red eyes shining like mad dogs hot on the scent, and their badges and pistols all aglow. Wings and whips streaming out behind them.

Hell hath no Fury.

What Hell does have is an office, where they collect like blood in an abattoir gutter, prowling around the door, and Alecto turns her skull-face to Persephone and grins, “Bad business, ma’am. You sure you wanna see this?”

Persephone, in a dress as black as the things you whisper in a lover’s ear at two o'clock in the morning, says, very cooly, “Oh, I’m no stranger to a bad business.”

Hades ushers them all inside.

“You know,” Alecto drawls lasciviously, “I was hopin’ you’d run, tell the truth. Lord Hades,” she says

“You are forsworn,” says Tisiphone, with an evil relish,

“And bein’ forsworn, are ours,” says Megaera, claws rattling against her rings.

Hades says nothing. He only twists his wedding band, and nods at his wife.

Perspehone stoops low like the end of summer over the big, black filing cabinet, and comes up with folder the color of anthracite, glossy and thin, like the edge of a knife.

They reach for the folder. She jerks it back.

“You’ll find it’s all in order.” she says, “He is remanded to your custody, pending his trial.”

“Trial?” Alecto hisses, Tisiphone hisses, Megaera hisses.

“I don’t think so,” they snarl.

“I do,” says Perspheone, of the Field and the Flowers, Queen of the Green and the Growing. And the Dead. “And I’ll do as I see fit in my own house. Man gets a trial. Let’s begin, shall we?”

And Persephone, being as she is the Queen of the Dead and the Twice-Redlined Binding Agreement, knowing, as she does, the rules of the game, hikes up her skirt and pulls her silver flask from its holster on her thigh, and tosses it over, to post her husband’s bail.

“There. All paid up. Now,” and she is the Life and the Living it Up, the Ways and the Means and the Queen of the Dead Down Below, shining black like an eclipse against the neon stars outside, “this man broke the Law of the Underground, and I am in charge of it, and I’m pardoning him. You can go now.”

Hell shakes. It’s all a redness and a howling, like dying all over again, like being born, a screaming scarlet to split the world from Hell on up, Santa Ana winds and pistol fire. Ain’t a soul alive or dead as could tell you what happened during all of it. Don’t matter, truth be told. What a winter, tell you what. Tell you one thing.

Only thing worth mentioning, and it’s that Mr. Hades took his wife all the way back up to her Mama’s doorstep the next spring, stepping out of his long black car with her hand on his bricked-up arm, and there’s a rumor to the tune of there bein’ something different about it. 

Flowers in the mortar, red on white on black.

Like cards on the table. Newspapers. Winter fruit.

Like the world had changed.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr](https://thefaustaesthetic.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/gin_n_chthonic) for the complete erosion of any and all narrative distance, and Hadestown Content.


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